Individual-level interventions for alcohol-related violence: Expanding targets for inclusion in treatment programs

PurposeAlcohol-related violence is a major public health problem, which can be tackled at a number of different levels, including societal, contextual, familial, social, and individual. The focus in this paper is on individual treatments to reduce the risk of violence associated with social drinking.MethodsThis is a narrative review of the processes by which alcohol increases the likelihood of violence, with an emphasis on its deleterious effects on social information processing.ResultsAlcohol priming promotes aggression cognitions and behavior; the drinking context presents triggers for violence; alcohol focuses attention on aggression cues; alcohol outcome expectancies predict drinking; anxious antisocial people who drink to increase social confidence may be at increased risk for aggression; hypermasculine values play a part in aggressive responding; emotional responses of anger, fear and excitement play a part in aggressive responses to perceived provocation; having a broad and accessible aggressive response repertoire, along with positive evaluations of aggressive responses predict aggressive behavior.ConclusionsAdditional intervention components that could improve the effectiveness of individual-level interventions for alcohol-related violence are suggested. These could augment conventional interventions, but there is a considerable amount of work to be done in developing applications specifically for alcohol-related violence and evaluating outcomes.

► Individual-level interventions for alcohol-related aggression need to be updated
► Incorporate treatment components based on recent research
► Social information processing is a useful framework
► This is an integrative narrative review
► Focus on automatic processing, knowledge strucures, emotions, response selection